Looking for Lisa

Like many girls her age, Lisa Dorrian worked hard and liked a party. So why was she 'disappeared' by loyalist terrorists? Henry McDonald investigates a tragic tale of drug dealing, paramilitary infighting and a community living in fear

Until Lisa Dorrian vanished in mysterious circumstances earlier this year, her family had managed to escape the horrors of the Northern Ireland Troubles. The Dorrians are Catholics living in a village that is largely Protestant, on the edge of a seaside unionist town that has been relatively untouched by 35 years of incipient civil war. They stress that during that time they were never subjected to abuse or violence, even in the darkest days of the conflict.

Yet, after coming through three decades of sectarian slaughter, Lisa Dorrian has joined the ranks of Ulster's 'disappeared' - those who have been abducted, in some cases tortured, murdered and then buried in the tightest of secrecy by paramilitary groups, mainly the IRA. Lisa's disappearance, however, is different in one crucial sense - she is the first person to be 'disappeared' by loyalist terrorists

Inside their pristine detached home in Forest Hill, a cul de sac in the middle of Conlig village just outside Bangor, Lisa's mother Patricia and sister Joanne recall the days when the television news broadcast images of carnage and destruction across the rest of Northern Ireland and beyond.

'I remember one year going to the zoo with my dad,' recalls Joanne, 'and we were driving through East Belfast. I saw debris on the road, burnt-out cars. I asked my dad why they were there, because I hadn't a clue about the violence going on just 15 miles away in Belfast. We were wrapped in cotton wool up in Bangor.'

Patricia, a native of Oldham in Lancashire who fell in love with an Ulsterman and moved with him to Northern Ireland 23 years ago, says her relatives in England sometimes knew more about atrocities than she did. 'My family would ring from England and say "What about that bomb?" or "What about that trouble in Belfast?" and I would say it was news to me, I haven't turned on the TV yet.'

But even in Forest Hill and the village beyond, there are undertones of paramilitary menace and sectarian hatred. On the ornate rock at the entrance to the cul de sac with 'Forest Hill' chiselled into the stone, someone has taken the trouble to chip in the capital letters 'FTP' - Ulsterspeak for 'Fuck The Pope'. Meanwhile, in the village main street, set in the wall above thelocal Spar, are two plaques celebrating the murderous exploits of loyalist terror group the Red Hand Commando (RHC), an organisation that is closely tied to the larger Ulster Volunteer Force.

One of the men who detectives and other loyalists believe played a central role in Lisa's disappearance earlier this year belongs to the RHC; the other main suspect once had links to the Ulster Defence Association and now sells drugs for yet another, rival faction, the Loyalist Volunteer Force. And in a case that echoes the IRA murder of young nationalist Robert McCartney in a Belfast bar on 30 January this year, these men have used their loyalist connections to impose a code of omerta on anyone with information about Lisa's fate.

Lisa Dorrian vanished between 27 and 28 February this year, supposedly after a party at a caravan park in Ballyhalbert, a favourite seaside haunt of working-class Protestants from the Greater Belfast area. Within weeks of her disappearance the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) concluded that Lisa had been killed, but had no idea as to where she may be buried. Over the past four months there have been several land, sea and air searches across the North Down coast to try and locate her body, but at the time of writing she remains 'missing, presumed dead'. No one has been charged in connection with her disappearance, nor have any of the nine to 10 friends with whom she was at the time of the party come forward to the police or the Dorrian family with information. One young woman has even provided an alibi for the chief suspect.

Joanne, an attractive, effervescent student, has abandoned her English Literature course at the University of Ulster at Coleraine to campaign for justice for her sister. She reserves most of her bitterness for the group of young women who befriended both Lisa and her killers.

'I have always classed myself a feminist who would stand by women that were the victims of male violence. So I can't understand why the women in that group of so-called friends haven't had the decency or guts to help us. There hasn't been one single phone call or message of sympathy. It's as if Lisa never existed to them.'

The family has raised £10,000 reward money for information about where Lisa's body is located; a tabloid newspaper is running a 'Bring Lisa Home' campaign; and the Dorrians have made several harrowing appeals on local TV pleading for anyone who was with her during those final days to come forward. They have even enlisted a medium who led them to a water-filled quarry at Kircubbin on Strangford Lough, although police divers failed to find anything. So far, according to Patricia, the Dorrian family have come up against 'a wall of silence', a barrier made seemingly impenetrable by the grip paramilitaries still exert on communities across Northern Ireland, even after their cease-fires were declared 11 years ago.

North Down is the wealthiest constituency in the north of Ireland, with the highest number of millionaires in the Province. Locals quip that it is a society divided between the Haves and the Have-Yachts. The coastal region is populated by QCs, hospital consultants, senior police officers and financial directors, as well as the leading figures of the unionist political class. However, even here in the most affluent part of Ulster, all the main loyalist terror groups exert power and instill fear. Conlig, for instance, was home to LVF terrorist Adrian Porter, a close associate of exiled UDA boss Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair. Porter was shot dead in the village four years ago during an LVF feud with the rival UVF, the gunman being a retired Royal Marine Commando brought in for the hit.

Last summer, Lisa broke up with her long-term boyfriend and in late autumn fell in with a new crowd of friends, some of whom had paramilitary connections. The group spent most weekends consuming industrial quantities of ecstasy and amphetamines supplied by loyalist paramilitary drug dealers. Lisa's drug taking became such a dominant force in her life that she gave up her job in a Bangor sandwich shop and, claims her mother, became increasingly dependent on an east Belfast man with known loyalist connections who plied her with gifts, offers of holidays and, of course, drugs.

By Christmas, Lisa was in such a state of physical and mental torment that she agreed to see a drugs counsellor and even wrote a promise to her mother on a Christmas card that she was giving up for good. Patricia still has the card with Lisa's vow to kick the habit. It reads: 'Drugs are for mugs and I am a mug no more.'

'Before Christmas I asked Lisa what this new man did for a living,' Joanne says. 'She replied that he was a joiner, but there was never any sign of tools in the house. During the week he was always there instead of being at work. It was getting very suspicious and the only thing we could guess at was that he was a drug dealer.'

By the turn of the year Lisa's weight had dropped dramatically and the Dorrians started to suspect she was avoiding them. 'Lisa always had a nice figure, but by Christmas she had dropped to a size eight and looked unhealthy, although she was pleased with her body,' Joanne remembers.

In early January Patricia started to notice that Lisa was becoming less welcoming towards her family whenever they arrived at her home.

'I remember passing by her house and popped in to see her. One of her friends was at home and when I asked where Lisa was she replied that she'd just gone to the shop. Then the guy we were worried about came downstairs and without explanation he said he had to go. I'm sure she was not at the shop at all - my gut instinct was that she was upstairs avoiding me.'

Despite her promises to stop taking drugs, Lisa was drifting further out of contact with her mother and sisters Joanne, Michelle and eight-year-old Ciara. It was a choice that was to prove fatal.

On the days leading to her disappearance, Lisa was her normal bubbly, chatty self, according to Joanne. There were no warning signs that she felt under threat from anyone or any organisation.

'She was in very, very good form. She told Dad she was looking forward to that weekend; there was no hint that she was in any sort of trouble.'

The last photograph taken of Lisa shows her in a pair of furry moonboots inside the kitchen of her flat in the Balmoral area of Bangor some time in the week leading up to her disappearance. She never went anywhere without these boots, but it was a choice of footwear dictated not by fashion but embarrassment. Five years ago she fell on an escalator in a Bangor shopping centre and suffered terrible injuries to both legs. Patricia says that, after a series of operations, the doctors told her the half-moon shaped scars were permanent. 'Ever since then all she wore was boots, even on holiday.'

Just before she disappeared, Lisa was about to be compensated for her injuries, to the tune of around £50,000. Lisa planned to use the money to set up a jet-ski business in either mainland Spain or the Canaries, to make a clean break from a life in Northern Ireland dominated by drugs. She was due to meet a financial adviser to discuss the final settlement in the first week of March.

The last place Lisa was seen alive was at a caravan park on a disused wartime airfield close to the shore at Ballyhalbert. During an all-weekend party fuelled by drink and drugs, Lisa received a call on her mobile phone. Detectives believe she left the caravan to meet the caller. A local man has recently come forward with information about a blonde woman resembling Lisa going into a house in Ballyhalbert around 5am on Monday 28 February. Inside the house it is thought that Lisa was questioned about missing drugs and money, and then subjected to a severe beating. She was then taken against her will in a car via isolated country roads to Holywood, a town just outside Belfast whose affluence is in sharp contrast to the grim dilapidation of Ballyhalbert, with its greasy cafes selling cholesterol-laced 'Ulster fries', gospel halls and rundown caravan park decorated with plastic gnomes and potted plants.

There are several theories as to what happened next. The most plausible is that she was the victim of another vicious assault involving two men, one of whom was a teenager. Panicking after they realised Lisa was dead, they took her body away in a car and buried it somewhere in the North Down area, possibly in woodland. An alternative is that Lisa's body was taken out to sea, weighed down and dumped in deep water.

Meanwhile, the UVF has set up its own 'inquiry' into Lisa's disappearance, which is running in parallel with the official police investigation. In a macabre twist to the tragedy, and apparently without irony, the UVF has appointed convicted murderer Samuel Cooke to head its 'investigation'. He was one of five loyalists jailed in 1994 for the sectarian murder of 26-year-old Catholic mother Anne Marie Smyth in 1992. Her killers strangled her and cut her throat, after she was lured to a party in east Belfast by a group of UVF men drinking in a local loyalist social club.

Mark Dornan, the PSNI's senior investigating officer on the case, is scathing about the loyalists' self-appointed 'policing' role in the tragedy. 'These gangs have no moral or legal authority and they will end up causing even more crime,' he says. At least 150 officers, ranging from underwater search teams to behavioural analysts, have spent the past four months trying to find Lisa. Yet despite having spoken to nearly 1,200 people, the PSNI is yet to achieve a breakthrough. Although Dornan will not be drawn on the killers' skills in covering their tracks, he - like other detectives - knows that some of those responsible learned their trade in the paramilitaries.

Lady Sylvia Hermon, the Ulster Unionist Party's only MP, represents North Down at Westminster. She wears the light-blue ribbon symbol of the 'Bring Lisa Home' campaign and visits the Dorrians regularly to offer advice and support. Lady Hermon, whose husband Jack was a former Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, accepts that even in prosperous North Down, the loyalist paramilitaries cast a long shadow.

'These organisations are not just making the Dorrians' lives a misery. There are hundreds upon hundreds of people in this area who are living in misery under these thugs.' Lady Hermon sees the existence of the Assets Recovery Agency - the body charged with seizing the criminal assets of gangsters and paramilitaries throughout the UK - as the answer to the resilient presence of paramilitaries.

'My view would be that anyone suspected of a paramilitary crime such as Lisa's disappearance should have their assets frozen and asked to explain where their wealth came from. It's the only way to stop it,'she adds.

The LVF protests it played no role in Lisa's disappearance and the UVF, along with its RHC satellite, can with some justification equally protest that it would never sanction such a crime.

It may end up that those who murdered Lisa and then buried her in secret will in their turn receive an OBE from the UVF - more Ulsterspeak, this time meaning, 'One bullet behind the ear'.

The Dorrians care next to nothing about the intricacies and sordid squabbling inside the loyalist paramilitary underworld. All they want, like the dozen or so families whose relatives have been 'disappeared' by the IRA, is for Lisa's body to be located for proper burial.

In the living room of the Dorrians' home stand all of Lisa's worldly possessions at the time of her disappearance. They are tightly packed into two locked suitcases that will not be opened until her body is recovered.

'When I look at the cases and realise that was Lisa's life inside them, all the things she held dear, I get angry,' says Patricia. 'Why are her so-called friends not speaking up? Haven't they got a heart?'

At the end of June there appeared to be a breakthrough. The PSNI inquiry team recovered a Vauxhall Vectra - the car they now believe was used to take Lisa to her death. There had been reports this car had been scrapped shortly after Lisa's disappearance. If the Vectra does turn out to be the car in which Lisa was driven away, detectives say there is every chance there will be DNA traces that can be linked to her killers.

A forest of sympathy cards lies on the Dorrians' living-room floor. They come from all religions with messages of support from the other families of the disappeared, some of whom are still waiting for the discovery of the remains of their loved ones decades after they vanished. Above the cards there is a birthday balloon still floating on its string from Joanne's 22nd at the end of May. There was another Dorrian birthday 17 days later, but there are no cards or balloons to mark that occasion. Lisa would have been 26.

Faction men

The existence of this alphabet soup of loyalist paramilitaries and their generally malevolent influence on communities like Conlig and families such as the Dorrians reminds the outside world that the IRA is not the only force casting a shadow on postwar Northern Ireland. Indeed as long as those loyalist groups remain in existence, they provide a powerful argument for republicans who protest that the IRA cannot disband while there is a latent threat from armed groups on the other side of the sectarian divide. These factions include:

UVF Ulster Volunteer Force

Originally founded in 1912 by Sir Edward Carson and reconstituted just before Ulster's Troubles erupted at end of the Sixties. During the Troubles, the UVF carried out one of the biggest atrocities when, in 1974, bombs exploded in Dublin and Monaghan town killing 33 people, including 20 women and two baby girls. Officially on ceasefire since 1994, but has since been responsible for an estimated 30 killings. All of these victims bar one have been Protestant.

RHC Red Hand Commando

A satellite of the UVF based mainly in North Down whose members include the murdered drugs baron Jim 'Jonty' Johnston. Its one-time leader Frankie 'Pig Face' Curry is thought to have killed at least a dozen people, most of them Catholics, targeted simply because of their religion. Curry defected from the RHC in 1996 and three years later his former comrades shot him dead in west Belfast.

LVF Loyalist Volunteer Force

Established in 1996 following a split inside the UVF's so-called Mid-Ulster Brigade. Led by the late Billy 'King Rat' Wright (below left), a loyalist terrorist leader shot dead in the Maze prison a year later. Heavily involved in drug dealing across Protestant areas of Northern Ireland, the LVF is responsible for killing Sunday World reporter Martin O'Hagan in 2001 - the only journalist deliberately murdered by terrorists in Northern Ireland.

UDA Ulster Defence Association

The largest loyalist paramilitary movement, set up in the early Seventies. The UDA provided the muscle behind the 1974 Ulster Workers' Strike that brought down the province's first power-sharing government. It evolved into a fragmented coalition of terrorist cells, the most notorious being 'C' Company. Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair led 'C' Company - the most deadly loyalist murder squad - until early 2000 when his faction was routed in a feud with the mainstream UDA.